Sunday, March 18.
Spelunking in a lava tube cave. We went spelunking. For those of you who, unlike myself, are not outdoorsy, spelunking is "cave exploring". I guess it's not terribly adventurous if the cave had already been explored... Anyway, we got picked up by this very nice Icelandic guy with a black beard, ready to explore a cave. Going into the earth with us were four others--two girls from Australia who were on a tour of Europe and were extremely unprepared for the cold and windy conditions of Iceland, and two Brits (a man, who moved to Iceland a few years back with his female friend) who seemed to have been friends at one point but otherwise were terribly awkward around each other.
We drove out to this cave about twenty minutes outside of downton Reykjavik and stopped in the middle of this road with nothing but lava rocks, snow, and mountains in the background. Quite beautiful. And then we had about a five minute walk to the cave (this is important). The cave used to be an old lava tube. Our guide told us that scientists knew it was formed in June, but they don't know what year. I missed the reasoning behind this because I was helping one of the Australian girls not kill herself on the ice in the beginning of the cave. The guy in the green is our guide who had a name that was so hard to pronounce, I forgot it completely. I really hope it wasn't something simple like John...
It was pretty cool climbing through the cave--definitely not one of the things on top of my To-Do list, but still a very cool experience. At the end of the cave, the eight of us turned our lights off and our guide told us a story about how there was a guy who loved this girl in a village nearby. The girl's father disapproved of their relationship so the guy fled the village and hid in the cave. The girl used to come visit him, but the trek to the cave took a day each way. The girl would disappear for days at a time to visit him. The father became suspicious and one day followed her, and saw that she was still with this guy. The father killed the kid, the daughter was so upset she tried to kill the father, but the father ended up killing her (I think). When the village people returned to give them a funeral, their bodies were missing. (Now is when everyone says "Ooohhhhh" and/or gasps). And now their spirits haunt the cave.
Also, since at one point the cave was a lava tube, the little drips from the ceiling were made when the lava flow receded and the lava on the ceiling quickly cooled. The white stuff is an algae that grows on the walls. It looks like someone spray painted silver paint, and it's really fragile. You can see where people wrote their names in it, which was actually quite upsetting.
Okay, so the walk from the cave to the car was miserable. Absolutely miserable. It was so incredibly cold and windy and there was snow blowing everywhere. After the picture was taken, my body kicked into the "flight" (like fight or flight) mode. I had one goal, and that was to get back into the car ASAP.
Then we got hot chocolate on the way home. Or as they say in Icelandic, "heitt súkkulaði".
Blue Lagoon.
Iceland, like Budapest, has its own thermal baths. It was actually really cool. We took a bus from our hotel to Blue Lagoon (which happened to be surprisingly blue). On the bus ride, I sat up front and had a nice conversation with the driver. I also sneakily took a picture of him. He is just a baller.
We talked about the differences of culture and life between the US and Iceland--mainly prices of goods. He didn't speak English too good (yes, bad grammar was used purposefully), so communication was a little difficult. Also, when we were discussing gas prices, he would say in terms of Kronas per liter, which I had to then convert into Dollars per gallon. When I finally told him how much gas was (gas was like $3.50 a gallon when I left for Europe), he said, "Oh! Wow! Very cheap! I drive all day!" He also told me to go to Sweden. His daughter lives there, and he said it's beautiful. When we talked about vacationing, it was no surprise that residents of Iceland like to go to warm places. The bus driver spoke about Miami and how he loved Miami. Also, something else we noticed about Icelanders, is that they LOVE (I cannot stress this enough) Apple and Apple products. Literally, everyone has an iPhone, and they all overpay considerably for it. The bus driver paid about $1,300 (US) for an iPhone 4S and he could not say a bad thing about his phone. He actually said he paid less for an iPad--which was kind of surprising.
Anyway, we got to Blue Lagoon and braved the two minute walk from the bus to the building (a brutal cold, wind, and snow mixture), which happened to be quite luxurious. This was such a different experience than Budapest. There was no nudity in the pools (including the wearing of Hungarian Penis Smocks--no Icelandic Penis Smocks either), and everything was new, clean, and modern. The heated floors were a nice touch as well. There were three sections to the hot springs: an indoor section, an outdoor section, and a manmade "cave" section outside. The hot springs were quite warm considering the temperature outside. The bus ranged from -6 Celsius (21 degrees F) to 0 Celsius (32 degrees F) during our ride, which does NOT include wind chill. It was cold. We went outside first and did a lap. It was extremely chilly. I, being the tough guy I am, screamed like a little girl several times. I will only admit it to my readers, because I trust you will keep that information private...deal? Here are some pictures of the outdoor and indoor areas. We presumed the guy in the neon yellow was making sure no one died in the outdoor pool.
All in all, the Blue Lagoon was a success. I'm sure it would have been that much more awesome had it been much less windy and a little warmer. I'd love to go back some day.
Dinner.
We ate a restaurant called The Grill Market. The food was incredible. A highlight was definitely the salmon app. So good. It tasted similar to what I would imagine the tears of angels taste like. Let the pictures do the talking.
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